Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
Eight of us gathered for one of our periodic NewsRevue alum evenings at the Holborn Spaghetti House.
There were no controversial shortages of certain dishes this time, but there was an especially irritable waiter who seemed to decide that I am an idiot, perhaps because I turned up a little late and didn’t want to partake of the Prosecco and sparkling mineral water already on the table, but wanted to order my own non-sparkling beverages.
Most unusually for me, I prevailed in Colin Stutt’s quiz about the faces/quotes of Irish writers & characters. A lot of informed guesswork in my answers, plus some lucky, uninformed guesswork. But on the whole it seems I can tell Shaw from Wilde, Joyce from Beckett and the like.
I did not fare so well with John’s intriguing game about famous movie stars and the obscure locations from whence they hail.
The next day, John summed up the evening, wonderfully, in his inimitable words:
I am sure you will all be celebrating the 234th anniversary of the Mutiny on the Bounty, which falls today (I know I am) but if I could drag you away from your Tahiti-shaped cupcakes for a moment…
Just wanted to thank you all for turfing yourselves out last night to the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. I would like to thank Colin for his wonderful Irish-themed quiz. I tried bits of it out on Jenny this morning, because she got herself an Irish passport last year in response to Brexit. One of her grandfathers was Irish, which is enough to make you count as Irish, apparently. Sad to say, she didn’t shine, so her citizenship may be re¬voked. I would like to praise Ian for winning said quiz and Mark for know¬ing the birthplaces of more Hollywood Royalty than anyone need to.
I would like to thank Colin again for the generous touch of the Prosecco and each and every one of you for your warm congratulations on Jenny and I becoming man and wife after all these years. I was very touched.
As I looked around the room, I thought how lucky I was to enjoy the friendship of such erudite, witty and good-hearted men. Such a shame that none of them could be there. You’d like them. And Caroline, I left you off that list cos it spoilt the flow of the joke, not because I’ve forgotten you.
With thanks to John Random for several pictures, not least this one: me with Noel Christopher– Caroline is also there, trying to hide in the corner of this picture
Given that Ivan Shakespeare Memorial dinners are principally gatherings of comedy writers, they have not been much of a laughing matter of late, with many of our number having departed permanently. Indeed John Random pondered various re-namings this time:
Ivan Shakespeare Debbie Barham Nick R. Thomas Gerry Goddin Mike Hodd Chris Stanton Memorial Dinner
or
“Ivan to Stanton Memorial Dinner”
Yet plenty of us still survive to dine, chat and play silly quizzes. A dozen or so of us gathered this time.
Random gets busy with his camera phone while Barry looks on and……Hugh Ryecroft shows off the new trophy: The Hoddy
Following the departure of Mike Hodd, we toasted our patriarch and played an extra quiz for the above magnificent new trophy: The Hoddy, provided by Mark Keegan, who set the seminal Hoddy Quiz. Professional quiz dude Hugh Ryecroft took that trophy.
Hugh couldn’t win the regular annual Ivan Shakespeare Trophy, as he won it last year and set that quiz this year. Bit of a busman’s holiday for Hugh, setting quizzes for Ivan Shakespeare dinners. Still, it was Keith Wickham who took that magnificent prize, which will no doubt grace his trophy cabinet for most of 2023:
Wickham lands the big one
I was close, but no cigar on both quizzes, in particular one of them on which i only missed out by a couple of points.
But of course all were winners, as it was such a heart-warming and convivial evening, as indeed it always is.
Was that Keith’s classic James Mason impression making me laugh?
Mike Hodd (see headline picture) is one of the founders of the show, was a mainstay at our writers meetings in the 1990s and is a fairly regular attendee at Ivan Shakespeare dinners.
For some reason, Mike roped me into liaising with Emma and Shannon at the Canal Cafe to help pull together the 40th anniversary event.
I take very little credit for the superb evening that ensued, but I did contribute some archival material and I did stitch up some NewsRevue alums by gathering names and serial numbers through the e-mail connections.
I also suggested that the event include a smoker, in line with a tradition we had back in the 1990s of having after show parties at which we performed party pieces. Mike particularly liked that idea so it simply had to happen.
But the organisation of the event was really down to Emma, Shannon and the team who did a cracking job.
First up was a pre show drinks reception, at which some of us (encouraged to dress up), looked like this:
Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and Me.
Then we watched the current show. An excellent troupe comprising Dorothea Jones, Brendan Mageean, Gabrielle De Saumarez and Rhys Tees under Tim MacArthur’s directorship.
Before the smoker, Shannon and the team played us a wonderful 40th anniversary video compilation of pictures and video clips from across the decades. Here is that very vid:
I was proud to have supplied some of the clippings contained therein and moved to see the video and ponder on just what 40 years of a show really means.
Then the smoker. I was really delighted that current/recent cast and crew joined in the idea and chipped in with their own party pieces, which were very entertaining.
From our own “Class of ’92, there were several contributions, captured pictorially by Graham Robertson, with thanks to him for the following pics.
Mike Hodd made two excellent contributions to the smoker;
a very amusing stand up set in which he somehow managed to extract humour from Parkinson’s disease. I shall never again be able to dissociate in my mind the film Fatal Attraction from the affliction fecal impaction;
a slow build routine in which he was an auctioneer trying to fob off some utter tat as masterpieces. Great fun.
Gerry Goddin
Gerry Goddin performed an audience participation routine in which we joined in a song about “mutton dressed as lamb” to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown. Gerry dealt with my heckling so masterfully that some people thought the heckles had been planted; they had not.
Barry Grossman
Barry performed a stand up comedy routine with masterful poise. I thought we were all supposed to be writers who cannot perform.
I wanted to celebrate one of my classic songs from 1992; the second of mine to be performed in the show but a perennial:
Chris Stanton was the performer who made my debut contributions to NewsRevue such a success in 1992. He too was at this party and performed a couple of classics brilliantly well; A Loan Again and also John Random’s classic 0898 song. No photo of the Chris’s performance as yet – unless Graham finds one of those amongst his collection.
Jonny Hurst also celebrated John Random’s ouevre with a rendition of the wonderful “Tell Laura A Liver”.
This was in part done to honour John Random’s recent selfless act to donate a kidney out of pure altruism to an anonymous recipient. To complete the honouring of that extraordinary good deed, Jonny and I jointly segued the liver song into a visceral medley including a specific piece we put together to honour John’s donation:
WHO DO YOU THINK GOT YOUR KIDNEY, MR RANDOM?
(Lyric to the Tune of “Who Do You think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”)
THE MAIN REFRAIN
Who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Since your organ donation? Was it a girl for to stop her renal pain? Was it a boy who can take the piss again? So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
FIRST MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns – he came to town The age of twenty-one He did assume a nom de plume And took the name Random.
FIRST REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
SECOND MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns did not return With kidney number one But kept his sense of humour… (pause) …And is ready with his pun.
SECOND REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
It was a great party, it was a terrific show and it was a superb smoker. A truly memorable event to celebrate 40 years of a wonderful show.
As John Random said in his preamble to the smoker, NewsRevue has initiated so many careers and transformed so many lives over those decades. And for those of us who have formed enduring friendships, it is hard to express our gratitude to Mike Hodd and those who have kept the NewsRevue torch burning week in week out for forty years and counting.
When I say, “funny people” in this context, I mean comedy people, not necessarily strange people. Some of them might also be strange of course, but I’ll leave that judgement to the reader.
Funny-comedic, not necessarily funny-strange: Rohan Candappa
First up, for lunch on Tuesday 5 March, was Rohan Candappa. He wanted to try a Malaysian & Indonesian restaurant, Melur, on the Edgware Road. As I had requested that we meet somewhere over my side, as I needed to be at Lord’s for a game of tennis afterwards, that seemed a reasonable choice to me.
The weather forecast suggested heavy rain around the time I’d be finishing at Lord’s, so I took my car to Aberdeen Place and parked there ahead of lunch.
The food at Melur was excellent. I was restrained in my choices given the tennis bout ahead, going for an inoffensive Nasi Goreng. Rohan went for a more spicy version and for some roti canai, which I tasted and reckon was a pretty darned good roti. I shall forever more associate that dish with Rohan, so much so that I’ll think of it as…Rohan Kanhai. Coincidentally, I shall similarly forever be reminded of that Guyanese cricketer when I recall Rohan Candappa’s visit to Lord’s with me, last year:
I’m thinking of naming my novel genre “Mock Tudor Rock”
Rohan, who plans to manage my band, made several branding suggestions – I responded to those thoughts subsequently as follows:
The Wessex Petards might work better as a band name the The Wessex Pistols and I still feel that Sir Michael Smear is a more visceral nom de punk than Sir John Rancid. But I cannot better your album name – Never Mind The Bailiwicks – it ought to go gold or platinum on the name alone, before we release so much as a tiny sound sample…in fact it had better go gold or platinum before we release so much as a tiny sound sample.
I very much hope my thoughts were helpful and that Rohan can find a way to make the Threadmash idea work for all concerned.
I had allowed loads of time between lunch and tennis, so brought plenty of reading matter with me which I enjoyed reading over a couple of excellent cups of coffee at Café Laville, overlooking the canal in sunshine.
Then on to Lord’s in order to be taught a lesson by one of my favourite real tennis opponents who has recovered from injury since I last played him and seemed keen to let me see how well he can now move around the court. A surprisingly close match in the circumstances – I thought I did well to get close.
On Thursday 7 March I had a music lesson with Ian Pittaway, who passed expert judgement on my Mock Tudor Rock…
Place the rascal in the stocks at once!
…while helping me with some other silly ideas (watch this space) and sensible techniques (don’t hold your breath).
Then a visit from John Random for a bite of lunch and the second of two sessions of NewsRevue archiving. The first session was 25 January. John has a large collection of NewsRevue programmes, flyers and reviews, which simply needed to be digitised.
We succeeded in scanning it all in two sessions, despite lots of chat, listening to some music and cricket-match like breaks for lunch/tea.
Following some cheerful chat about murder rates around the world, which identified Mexico and especially Tijuana as a hot spot, we both agreed that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass must have a lot to answer for. So we listened to a fair smattering of Herb. John was especially taken with his version of the Third Man theme…
…and his version of A Walk In The Black Forest:
We decided that this type of music is, in many ways, the soundtrack of our childhood. Of course we like to remember the cool stuff from the 1960’s and no doubt have listened to far more of the cool stuff in later life, but when we were kids this was the music that was being played on the radios and gramophone players most of the time in our homes and the homes we visited.
We also of course chatted about NewsRevue casts, shows and material gone by. We discussed one of my own classics from more than 25 years ago, Mad Frogs And Englishmen, which I realised I hadn’t yet Ogblogged. I have put that right now:
Job done in terms of the archiving, it was time for us to set off for one of our regular Ivan Shakespeare Memorial gatherings – at which NewsRevue writers from years gone by gather to eat, chat, laugh and informally quiz.
It was International Women’s Day today, so we found ourselves an all male gathering this time. In addition to me and John: Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan, Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and a rare but much appreciated visit from NewsRevue founder and “father of the house” Mike Hodd.
The venue was the Spaghetti House in Holborn this time; a good notch up in service and food quality from Cafe Rogues in my view. My first time there but not the group’s first time.
For many years John Random has talked about his vicarious support for a football team by the name of Blyth Spartans. His home town, Hartlepool, is John’s real team but he has carried a torch for this other team for decades.
John excitedly reported that he finally got to visit Blyth Spartans and saw an exciting match there just the other week. I believe it was this match. I feel that this momentous event needs recording for posterity, as does an image of John wearing his new Blyth Spartans titfer.
John reported on the event as follows:
I would like to say a big thank you to all those of you who came out to the Spaghetti House on Thursday night. Thanks also to Mike, Colin and Gerry for their entertaining quizzes. Falling as it did, almost on International Women’s Day I regret to report that NewsRevue has still not come clean on its gender pay gap. We haven’t even had any jokes about it, yet – though I have a feeling, we will – and soon.
As I said earlier, it had been a funny week.
Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar.
Well, maybe funny ha-ha AND funny peculiar. Good times with good friends.
28 September 2018 – Dinner With Deni, Tony, John & Kathleen
Early evening was my last game of real tennis at The Queen’s Club in my capacity as an MCC refugee:
Photo of me at Queens (from a different day) with opponents cut/airbrushed out
A fierce battle, it was, with a gentleman way above my pay grade, but through the wonders of the handicapping system we had a close fought match, which ended as a draw.
I thought 20 minutes would be more than enough time to get a couple of miles down the road to Deni & Tony’s house, but I hadn’t counted on the Friday night traffic combining with an accident nearby.
Yet, I arrived at the same time as Daisy, coming from the opposite direction and we really weren’t that late.
Plenty of time for drinks and nibbles before dinner.
Deni had gone to town in the kitchen, with a gazpacho soup and a salmon dish as the main. Desert was their favourite; profiteroles – it happens to be one of Daisy’s favourites too.
Tucking in good and proper
Lots of lively discussion too, trying to put the world to rights. John’s moderate views were somewhat tempered by his opinion that the only feasible route back to sensible, moderate politics might be barricades and politicians up against the wall and shot.
Everyone was on good form despite it being Friday evening and we were all surprised when the Cinderella hour struck and we said our goodbyes.
2 October 2018 Jamming Session & Dinner With DJ
Coincidentally I played real tennis (now back at Lord’s) before my next evening out; a jamming session with DJ at DJ’s place.
As I had all my tennis gear in tow as well, I decided to forego the electric instrument (which had sort-of been the plan), taking my baroq-ulele instead.
Electric-ulele – not selected for this match in the end
We tried amplifying the baroq-ulele for a while, which sounded rather interesting actually. We also mucked around with the strange assortment of songs I’ve been working on; then mucked around with a few of our favourites.
We still cannot decide which of us is ground control and which of us is Major Tom. It shouldn’t be that complicated, but it certainly is.
As always, we had a good chat and ate some good food too. An interesting bottle of Croatian red wine too – that worked wonders on my vocal chords.
4 October 2018 – Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner
It’s been a while since we had an Ivan Shakespeare dinner – this one had been rescheduled more often than a routine visit by a British Gas engineer. But at least an Ivan Shakespeare dinner is pleasant and worth the effort.
Actually not much effort for me. Jasmine had suggested we try Bill’s in Kensington, which, frankly, is a hugely convenient option for at least two of us; me and Jasmine. In truth, many of us are starting to find Cafe Rogues tedious, in terms of the food (ordinary), the service (poor) and the tedious, Byzantine rules for Christmas gatherings.
A great turnout this time, a dozen of us, including some new-old faces, such as Emma, Nelson, Neil and Sam. Plus many of the usual suspects. I mostly got to chat with Jonny Hurst, Barry Grossman, Mark Keagan and Nelson at my end of the table.
What, no quiz?
For sure the food and service was better at Bill’s. The traditional “food half an hour later than everyone else’s” game for baiting Jonny Hurst is clearly just a Cafe Rouge Holborn thing; not a standard entertainment in all restaurants. Who knew?
John Random made an executive decision that the traditional quiz would not quite work with the ambiance – we were in a very central table position.
We are all keenly awaiting Graham Robertson’s “would I lie to you?” game, but we’re starting to think that he has sold our stories for megabucks to television syndicates in the Stans and has now fled the country with his ill-gotten gains. We don’t care, we’re having a great time at these dinners without Graham and his game anyway.
Seriously, I always enjoy these gatherings and others must also do so because so many of us have been coming back for more, several times a year, since not long after the turn of the century.
In any case, herring didn’t form part of the Noddyland meal, which comprised smoked salmon nibbles followed by Janie’s (Daisy’s) famous wasabi beef fillet dish and finally danish apple cake. We hadn’t seen Jacquie and Hils for over a year; it was great to see them again and have a chance to reciprocate Jacquie’s warm hospitality.
As usual, Daisy had massively over-catered, so I was able to lunch on some left over beef, sauce and potatoes couple of times during the week, including Thursday…
…which was probably just as well, given the tardiness of the Cafe Rogues meal in Holborn that evening, at the comedy writers Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner.
I suppose you can chat, drink and even be ruined while you wait for food
To add insult to indigestion, four of us were served our deserts some 30 minutes after everyone else. Jonny escaped this time, but I was caught twice – along with Jasmine, Barry and John for the lengthy dessert desert.
Still, everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Nine of us gathered this time; me, John Random, Jonny Hurst, Jasmine Birtles, Colin Stutt, Hugh Rycroft, Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan and Barry Grossman.
Jasmine and John brought crackers. John Random’s were very special; he had doctored some real crackers, emblazoning them with a picture of Michael Buerk and describing them as Moral Maze crackers.
With Jasmine’s crackers, we played our regular Christmas game of trying to work out the feed line from the punchline of the corny cracker jokes…with limited success this year as the jokes were so corny. Examples:
A. A monkey burp.
Q. What’s silent and smells of banana?
A. Mrs Sippi
Q. Who is the most famous married woman in America?
But John had doctored his crackers with moral maze dilemmas to replace the corny jokes. Example:
Q. What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo?
A. A series of far-reaching ethical questions that go to the very heart of modern genetics.
Tut tut if you read that question and thought the answer was, “a wooly jumper”.
Jasmine and John pulled…
…which left Jasmine grappling with a tricky moral dilemma.
Traditional quizzing after dessert…or in the case of the four of us sorely neglected souls…during the dessert.
Colin Stutt again did a warm up game, taking the best jokes from the fringe for the last few years and seeing if we could remember the punchlines or construct good/better punchlines ourselves. I reckon I did a reasonable job on 10-12 out of 30 of them, actually knowing the answer to only a couple.
Mark, the holder of the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy, naturally led the main event quiz. I’m usually in with a chance when Mark writes the quiz but so are one or two other people. In a close run contest this year:
I scored an impressive but ultimately inadequate 55…I coulda been a contender but all I got was a one-way ticket to Palooka-ville;
Jonny Hurst stormed through to take the trophy with a breathtaking 58.
Mark had bubble-wrapped the trophy for safe-keeping…
…let’s hope that Jonny also treats the magnificent artefact with the respect it deserves.
Yes, the place was ridiculously noisy. Yes, the service was poor, except when it was terrible. But at Christmastime, almost everywhere is thus. These Ivan Shakespeare gatherings of good old friends are always lively, witty evenings that make me happy; that is the bit that really matters.
NewsRevue’s 2004 Guinness World Record for being the World’s Longest Running Live Comedy Show – Gerry Goddin far left, Barry Grossman back left, a wide-eyed me front right
…partly inspired by the fact that many of us who gather for these Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners have been hanging around NewsRevue now for 25 years…
…John Random decided to theme this get together around the notion “Class of ’92”.
I didn’t realise that John had actually persuaded Chris Stanton to come along this time, which was a very pleasant surprise. Chris brought a couple of ringbinder files with scripts from his 1992 runs, including the late Spring run, directed by John Random, in which I (or rather, my material) made its NewsRevue debut:
Seeing those files, it made me realise what a challenging job it must be for performers to do NewsRevue. The sheer volume of scripts, the mixture of sketches and songs, the changes to the show every week…
…Chris showed me one running order, for example, in which there was an unbroken sequence of fourteen or fifteen pieces in which he appeared.
John Random brought along a photo album which had lots of photos of NewsRevue types…even one of me and Janie from our very early days together…most people in the room were represented by at least one photo.
Mark Keagan was there, as was Barry Grossman, Nick R Thomas, Colin Stutt and Gerry Goddin, the latter of whom produced a particularly fiendish version of his “quiz” game and tortured us with it at the end of the evening.
Prior to this evening, when chatting at Lord’s, Chris Stanton had been threatening to have a bonfire of his old scripts. Part of my purpose was to help John Random to rescue this treasure trove for posterity. But by the end of this evening, Chris explained that he did not want to part with his scripts and had no intention of destroying them.
On the way home, my song “Coppers are Dressed as Hippies” popped into my head, as did the notion that I too have a ringbinder file at home with correspondence and one or two old running orders and programmes.
In the morning, I copied/wrote up “coppers” (click link here or above) and found a running order, programme and writers’ newsletter from Paula Tappenden’s summer run; the run that followed the John Random/Chris Stanton one.
In some ways, I thought, I had blooped by not bringing those artefacts to the evening. But in other ways, it seems more fitting that I use Ogblog as a medium, following up on the Class of ’92 evening, to circulate copies of my 1992 artefacts, shown below:
the programme for that Paula Tappenden run (late June through August 1992);
the running order from week four (late July 1992);
John Random’s unusually short writers’ newsletter w/e 31 July 1992…who was your visitor from Idaho, John? Do tell.
Postscript. In response to my request for details on the mystery visitor from Idaho, I received the following beautifully-crafted missive from John Random a week or so later:
…the friend from Idaho was my former flatmate Janet.
One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t spend the whole of 1986 simply writing down everything she ever said. Here was comedy gold, narrative gold right under my nose and I didn’t recognize it for what it was.
Without ever trying to be funny, without even KNOWING she was being funny, Janet contrived to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. This was chiefly because everyone she’d ever known was either barking mad or the victim of some cruel yet ludicrous twist of Fate.
I recall she had a pioneer ancestor who was run over by the very train that brought his family out West to join him. Apparently, he had started the celebrations a little too early and was a little too merry by the time the train pulled in.
Not that this should be taken as meaning she was catty or scabrous. On the contrary, she was a big motherly woman of the sort you might get if you crossed Jenni Murray with Claire Rayner.
Sadly, Janet’s not much of a writer, so I have very few letters of hers, and she seldom even e-mails. However, she recently broke a seven-year silence indicating that she might be coming over in a week or two. I do hope so.
In my grateful reply to John, I described Janet’s interruption to his newsletter writing that week as John’s “person from Porlock” moment.
My own offerings from that Paula Tappenden Week Four are all now up on Ogblog, btw, all clickable below:
NewsRevue’s 2004 Guinness World Record for being the World’s Longest Running Live Comedy Show – Gerry Goddin far left, Barry Grossman back left, a wide-eyed me front right
NewsRevue goes back all the way to 1979. When the show turned 25, in 2004, it was awarded the Guinness World Record for being the World’s Longest Running Live Comedy Show. I was there. I’d been there since 1992. This year my involvement with the show turns 25.
Earlier this week, coincidentally, I played real tennis with Chris Stanton (another NewsRevue alum, in his case a performer) at Lord’s. Chris was reminiscing with me about the show, not least because he was rummaging through his old files and found many complete runs of scripts from “our era”, which he was planning to shred. I think John Random might rescue them for posterity.
Chris then gave me a pretty-much word perfect rendering of Brian Jordan’s wonderful Arthur Scargill song, to the tune of My Guy. As John Random later reminisced:
He may not be to everyone’s liking/But as a union leader, he’s striking.
Hearing about Brian Jordan reminded me of my first big hit; The Ultimate Love Song, which Brian made his own for a while and took to Edinburgh (my material’s debut there) in his show “Whoops Vicar Is That Your Dick?” I am so proud to have had my Edinburgh debut in a show with that name.
After seeing Chris, I looked at my file and realised that The Ultimate Love Song turns 25 this week; I copyrighted it 29 February 1992…so perhaps it turns six-and-a-quarter. Anyway, it seemed right to mention it at the Ivan Shakespeare and I was badgered into giving a quick rendering, as much as I could remember.
Mark Keagan was at the Ivan Shakespeare dinner; he’s one of the more regular attendees. He mentioned that his father-in-law and former home secretary, David Waddington, sadly passed away last week. Which reminded me that I did once write a song with a verse about Waddington; again nearly 25 years ago. We all (Mark included) agreed that the song might come in handy for him over the coming weeks…well you never know…so I have upped that one too. Happy Tories it is called – also about Maggie Thatcher and Chris Patten – click here.
Mark was awarded the 2016 trophy, but should he have been? Rumour has it that John might have been handed the wrong envelope…
Gerry Goddin and John both produced quizzes. Gerry’s was infernal as usual; I did well at first but tailed off at the end, letting Barry Grossman take the honours at the line. John’s was suitably silly and superficial for my mood – a small collection of “shock and awe” pun headlines to unfathom. Perhaps naturally, I won that quiz.
As always it was good to see the gang – a slightly depleted gathering this time but at least when that happens you get a chance to have a proper chat with everyone.
Janie and I had Hilary & Chris for dinner at Sandall Close. No doubt they had come up to drop & collect Christmas presents etc. No doubt they stayed and no doubt they disappeared early the next morning when Janie and I went off to play tennis.
19 December
Mansion House. Michael Mainelli had persuaded the City of London Corporation & the Lord Mayor to host a London Accord launch at the Mansion House. This felt like a big deal for Z/Yen at the time. So much so that I bought a stack of copies of The Diary Of A Nobody as the staff’s Secret Santa stocking filler that year, pointing them to the Mansion House chapter/thread in the book.
Any resemblance between Ogblog and The Diary Of A Nobody is purely coincidental.
Back down to earth at Cafe Rouge in Maida Vale for the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, including the seasonal Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy quiz.
John Random helpfully reported back after the event:
Many thanks to all those who came out to the… I dunno.. the 28th? Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. (We seem to have settled into a pattern of four a year and we’ve been doing this for 7 years now, so 28 sounds about right.) The occasion was graced by Jasmine Birtles, Caroline Bainbridge, Gerry Goddin, Barry Grossman, Mark Keegan, Colin Stutt, Nick R. Thomas, Ian Harris, Mike Hodd and myself. There were three quizzes. Barry retained the trophy.
For those struggling to imagine what this magnificent trophy might look like – here is a subsequent picture of it (with legends for some subsequent winners):
